The Cultural Politics of Breakdown and Repair
Friday, April 6, 2018 — 1:30–4:45 p.m., with reception following
The University of Maryland Center for Art and Knowledge at The Phillips Collection
Hillyer Court, NW, Washington, DC 20008
Free and open to the public
This symposium brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore how narratives of breakdown and repair provide new perspectives on the human condition, subjectivities, history and our understanding of failures. As we survey the cultural landscape of the anthropocene and the current state of the US political economy, breakdown and the attendant precarity of things on multiple scales (global, national, personal, linguistic) demand attention across the humanities and social sciences. What are the different genealogies of breakdown and repair that have been marginalized by capitalism’s ideology of progress and its practice of planned obsolescence? How might opening up discussions about these connections help us to begin to understand the histories of modernity and its effects? What voices and vocations might this work help to reclaim and reassert? What are the shifting politics and legal frameworks of breakdown and repair? How do processes of breakdown and repair intersect with gender, race and social class? What formal and informal institutions shape these histories and narratives? How are they embodied and articulated in language, objects, places and bodies?
Speakers
The Shoe: An Essay on Repair
Lisa Gitelman
Professor, Department of English and Department of Media, Culture and Communication
New York University
“The Component-Man is the One that Fails Most Often”: Idiophylaxis, Breakdown, and the Repair of the U.S. Soldier
Andrew Bickford
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
Georgetown University
Breakdown and Repair in International Criminal Law: The Case of Dominic Ongwen
Jill Stauffer
Associate Professor, Department of Peace, Justice and Human Rights
Academic Director, Center for Peace and Global Citizenship
Haverford College
Respondent
Elizabeth Anker
Associate Professor, Department of American Studies and Department of Political Science
George Washington University
Moderator
Joel Kuipers
Professor, Department of Anthropology and Elliott School of International Affairs
George Washington University
Symposium Chair
Joshua A. Bell
Curator of Globalization, Department of Anthropology
National Museum of Natural History